Art of conveying an experience: a visual anthropological approach to understand how film can convey patient experience

Studying patient experience has become increasingly important for providing alternative perspectives on healthcare and quality improvement. Understanding these experiences contributes to improving quality of care and aligning healthcare delivery with patients' preferences and values. One method for exploring such experiences is the use of film. Examples such as Experience Based Co-Design (EBCD) and Database of Individual Patient Experiences exemplify how film can be employed to collect and present patient narratives. However, what remains largely absent in this work is the incorporation of cinematographic ideas and practices, an area that has been explored extensively within the field of visual anthropology. To demonstrate how visual anthropology can inform the use of film in healthcare research, particularly studies that focus on patient experience, this paper highlights three lessons. First, attention to the multimodal qualities of film enables researchers to explore how senses, emotions, images and actions interplay within lived experience. Second, film provides opportunities to experiment with and represent the movement of time through montage, emphasising both the intensity of particular moments and the subjective experience of time. Third, the open-endedness of film fosters a wide range of possibilities for collaborative sense-making. Meaning in film is never fixed but continually in a process of becoming, offering researcher and practitioners new ways to think and rethink common practices and approaches to healthcare improvement.